Hello - orgs that are using the Contribution Import Utility for third-party gift data, how are you looking up and adding the customer id# to the file before import? Or are you importing as new accounts and relying on the merge procedure to clean up later?
I'm working with our Record team, testing with GiveLively export data, which includes email address and phone number in addition to the contribution data - I gave them SQL queries to return phone, email and customer# so they could do a VLOOKUP to pull the customer# into the file before import. Seems clunky.
Does anyone using this utility have a better process?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Jim!
I'll offer two option to consider, and I'm sure the community will reply with some additional thoughts in the meantime.
An option using standard tools would be to run the import in Review mode and examine the result for potential duplicates. The import process checks the system for potential duplicates for any rows where a constituent ID is not provided. It uses the matching criteria defined in T_DEFAULTS in the entry for Duplicate Matching. Potential duplicates are identified in the report output with a line like "Duplicate: Potential duplicate for existing ID 999: Reynolds, Jim. Match using Name and Primary Address." The Record team could review these results for matches, add the ID numbers to the file, and re-run the import. It's similar to what you are doing now, but perhaps with less work for you and more self-service options for the end-users.
Another option if you have the SQL skills would be to use add custom SQL in the LP_CONTRIBUTION_IMPORT procedure. This procedure is run before (and after) the import process and lets you modify the data before it's imported. You could match potential duplicates with some matching criteria that you define and add their IDs. There is some risk here since you are asking a computer to replace the work of a human, but you can mitigate that risk by using criteria that match the constituents exactly (or within your tolerance).
Hope that helps!